Homestead, Florida
by Hiron Otsuki
Summary: Below the snow line the zombies never froze. In Florida they went south, funneled increasingly inward by the beaches until they found a group of survivors. In the heat, it can be hard to tell the difference between a zombie and a shell-shocked refugee.


**World War Z **fanfiction.

I do not own World War Z, but I hope to be an extra in the movie.

* * *

**Homestead, Florida**

**-The small room has no window, only a few bare pieces of furniture, and the door locks from the outside. When I ask the inhabitant what she thinks about it, she just smirks and turns back to her book. Tanya Kellings is a tall, broad woman; one of the heroes of the Homestead Air Reserve Base, but now she's kept locked in a prison cell in the very base she helped protect. "I don't mind being confined, really. Having walls around me helps remind me that I'm not on the run anymore," she says without emotion. "I don't have to keep saving people's asses from Zack."-**

When the Great Panic came we were unprepared and unaware. My sister and I were just kids; we didn't pay much attention to the news or what was going on outside. My dad was a computer programmer and my mom was a homemaker. None of us ever really liked the news, and we thought that Zack was just a hoax. Something like the old Bonsai Kitten thing except bigger. My sister didn't like to do much of anything except make clothes and dresses for people who would buy them, and I was too into sports to care about what was happening in the world. We had friends outside the family, but when the friends stopped calling I guess we just didn't care. You could say we were a bit socially retarded.

**-She smiles as if at an old joke.-**

We had food; had a house; had solar panels that went on automatically when the power finally went, so what was going on outside didn't bother us at first. I kept running around the block and started working out on my own when people stopped coming to basketball practice, so I was the first one to see them.

**Them?**

Zack. Zombies--the first of 'em. I guess they'd just finished raiding the Thompsons' house. Or eating them, I guess.

They must've heard me coming, because when I jogged by they came busting out of the front door like rabbits squeezing out of a hole. They wasn't fast like rabbits. They were slower than anything I'd ever seen, 'cept maybe my gramma. They walked in a slouch; slow and steady, but when they started moaning it sent a chill through my blood. None of my neighbors came outside; I guess most of 'em musta been gone by then or eaten. Maybe they were bitten and turned into zombies 'emselves. No one ever warned my folks, so when Zack came out I had no idea what was goin' on or what they wanted. But that smell! God, like the time I used a dead fish for my third-grade science experiment, but worse! It was awful.

I kept running; how was I supposed to know they'd follow me? But they did, slow but sure after me. I went twice as far's I normally did afore I figured it was time to go home, and I guess they musta found somethin' else to eat around there, because they never came back to my house.

**-She shrugs.-**

Maybe they were Quislings or something. It would explain why they never followed me home. I heard screaming from down the block; where I came from. I guess maybe whoever it was was eaten by the Zack I'd just brought. When I got home I told my parents and we immediately started boarding up the windows. Well, my mom and sister and I did. My dad couldn't really help much. His diabetes was really bad, and his legs were too painful to walk. The only thing he could do was work the radio, so since he couldn't do anything else he just kept trying to contact people. The rest of us bricked up the windows. Even though my dad was useless, he used to be a fixer-upper guy around the house, so we had plenty of supplies in the garage.

We used the instant cement and the leftover bricks from when we made the back patio to brick up the bigger windows; the sliding glass ones that were too big to put boards in front of, and we mortared up the rest of the windows when we ran out of bricks. We figured we were safe; the only entrance was the front door, and since it opened out we thought Zack couldn't get through. We could be kings of our neighborhood, safe from Zack and anyone else.

When we thought the house was secure, my mom and sister started moving stuff upstairs; food, water, supplies. We had big bottles of water that we used for the bubble-tops. You know, the five-gallon ones that the guy in the truck brings replacements for every month and switches out the empty ones? My mom started filling the empty ones up and taking the full ones upstairs. Ashley was putting curtains on all the windows; we didn't know whether Zack was gonna be gone by the time night came around, but we didn't wanna take any chances. Then Dad got a transmission that finally told us what Zack was, and we all started freaking out since it sounded like they'd taken over south Florida.

I got picked to go out and find my relatives. We had a two story, and my dad's older brother only had a one story, and two of his kids still lived at home, so I figured there was a good place to start. The only weapon I got was a few knives I liked to collect and a pool cue. The guy on the radio said that you could kill them by headshots. I think knowing that I was better armed than anyone else out there.

**-Her fingers clench as if around a long staff, and then she looks at me and flushes.-**

Sorry, sometimes I get caught up in the memory.

**It's okay. Please go on. **

My uncle only lived down the block, but it took me nearly an hour to get there since I was afraid that G was gonna pop up at any second. I freaked out at any little rustle in the grass, and I didn't really know that since the birds were still making noise everything was still relatively safe. It was kinda creepy, walking down the road, since there were no running cars anywhere.

I thought I heard a baby crying off in the distance at one point, but I didn't want to go check it out since I didn't really know if Zack could trick people by making baby noises. I was too paranoid. But it kept me alive. When I got to my uncle's house they almost shot me. They knew what Zack was, but didn't know whether I was one or not. I guess I must've looked pretty frantic, peering in through windows looking for them.

They were all there; my uncle, his wife, the two daughters Tess and Belle that still lived with them, and my other cousin Jan and her husband Rick. They'd gotten married and had kids; a set of twins only a few months ago. Rick's clothes were dark and stained brown. When I asked where Mike and James were, my aunt slapped me.

_She _slapped _me_.

**-Tanya gestures at her face.-**

I ain't a pretty woman. I ain't small, either. And I'm usually pretty damn scary. My aunt was maybe this big.

**-She holds her hand out to indicate a height of about five feet.-**

And she slapped me. She told me not to ask about the kids again, and Jan started crying. Then I asked about the dog, and my aunt calmed down a little. "We had to put her down," she said. "She was barking too much."

I looked out back and saw a freshly-turned pile of earth I hadn't noticed before. That poor dog.

Then I remembered that we had to leave; that my parents were waiting.

We packed up what food and supplies they had, and we left. It took less time to get back to my house than it had to get over there, because we were running half the time. It was going to get dark soon, and I needed to find my gramma before then.

When we got back to the house my aunt and cousin-in-law started in on what windows hadn't been finished, and my mom and Ashley got to rest. Then I went back out to find my gramma.

**-Tanya smiles grimly.-**

Wasn't long before I found her. She was even closer than my aunt and uncle was. She didn't answer when I knocked on the door to her apartment. My uncle's car was out front; I thought they were maybe hiding in the bathroom, hoping Zack wouldn't find them.

I broke down the front door to get in. I didn't know it was gonna attract more of the bastards. I found my gramma locked in the bedroom with my uncle. He was mostly gone by then; the only reason I knew it was him was 'cause of that Snoopy shirt. It was the only thing that hadn't been ripped off.

I had to kill my gramma. It was tough; I loved that old woman, but when she reached for my arm with her mouth held open, I stabbed her with the end of the pool cue. It went right in through her eye socket, and when I jerked it around she dropped. I think I was in shock then. I didn't move for a while, and when I realized it was dark out it was too late. Zack was piling through the door like crazy, moaning, and me with my stupid little pool stick could only stab and stab and stab until it broke. I barricaded myself in the back balcony; you know, the ones with the screen porches?

I thought I was gonna die. Die or become one of them. But I was gonna go down fighting. I waited for them to break the glass open--I didn't think about breaking through the screen in the back. I was a stupid little bitch, so I just waited for them to come in. I looked over once at the bird cage she'd kept out there; the birds were gone, and the only thing left were little splashes of blood in the cage. Poor birds.

The glass was starting to crack when Zack started falling. Someone was hitting them from the back, but they were too focused on me to care. When there were only three left, I broke the glass myself and took them out.

It took a few minutes to realize that my saviors were my cousin Adam and his girlfriend Emily. I hadn't known that Emily could swing anything, let alone a fireman's axe, but half the split skulls on the floor were her kills. The others were from the light sledgehammer Adam had.

We hugged and kissed and then left to get back to my house. The streets were pitch black, and everything was dark without the streetlights. We were spooking at every shadow, and by the time we got back to my house it musta been close to dawn.

But we didn't find a house. Not a fortress. A ruin.

While I'd been off playing hero, Zack showed up en masse and surrounded the house.

My dad was eaten almost immediately. He couldn't move, and by the time enough zombies were killed to get to him, all that was left was a huge bloodstain on the couch.

My mom and my uncle G were now Zack, dead on the floor at my sister's hands. Everyone else was upstairs. They'd destroyed the stairs like the radio broadcast had said, and we were stuck downstairs.

They hauled us up using ropes made out of ripped bedsheets, and when we got upstairs...

Ashley and my cousin Tess got bit.

We had to kill them.

**-Tanya looks haunted, but there is a fierce look in her eyes all the same. Denial?-**

We knew we had to leave. Obviously our "fortress" was nothing of the kind. We had no choice. We loaded all of our food, supplies and weapons into backpacks, brought sturdy clothes and water, flashlights and medication. We knew we weren't going to need blankets in Florida.

Then we headed south. Rick said that there was an old castle there; something called Coral Castle, and that we could easily make it into a better fortress. Something to hold off a siege of zombies. It took us a week to get there; it was sixty miles south, but we didn't really have to worry about Zack. Everyone was heading north, not south, and the southbound freeways were pretty clear. We found a bike store that had been broken into already, and we took what bikes were left. It was only seven of us; there were more than enough bikes.  
Giles' Castle wasn't worth shit. It might have been once, but the walls were barely ten feet high, and there were openings everywhere. One of the best gates--a nine-ton block of rock--had been concreted open, and there was no new source of material or the means to move it to finish the damn walls.

But one of the reasons we chose that location was because our backup destination was less than two miles away. Homestead Air Reserve base.

It was abandoned by all but a skeleton crew, all aircraft and most vehicles gone, but supplies were everywhere, and we managed to create walls between several of the main buildings and hangars within a few days. We teamed up with the skeleton crew and were able to make a manageable safehouse. More refugees didn't arrive until three days after we had, and we had to carefully check them for bites and execute those who were bitten.

Then Zack came, and we managed to hold them off for a long time with the stored guns, ammunition, and weapons left in the base. We started letting them through an opening we created in the gates one at a time, then we killed them as they came. When the Army finally came back a few weeks later, we were still going strong and killing zombies.

The refugees coming in were fewer and fewer, and one day they just stopped altogether.

**-After a parting handshake from Tanya, I am allowed out of the cell and am led back to the guards' office. The man on guard duty nods at me once. "Can't be too careful with her, man," he says quietly. I sign next to my name, under the heading of Homestead Air Force Base Prison. Then I look over the charges one last time. TANYA KELLINGS: CONVICTED OF MASS MURDER OF INJURED AND REFUGEE UNITED STATES CITIZENS.-**


End file.
